Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs, is currently an MP for the Indian National Congress and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. He is the a… read more

Comments

I think you're anger is blinding you to some aspects of observable reality Peter Schaeffer. The demographics of who voted for Mr. Trump are a matter of counting, not "PC." And if being grossly offensive to large numbers of people (Mr. Trump's stock in trade) is the cure for "PC," I think I prefer the disease.

Sadly, I suspect that we agree on many issues concerning breakdowns in American institutions. We differ though, on the way to repair them. You've adopted a destructive narrative that I fear will only increase your level of anger and unhappiness going forward. Destroying the "cosmopolitans" isn't going to relieve your pain or create a workers paradise anymore than it did in 1917. It will just make us all as miserable as your are (a sort of equality, I guess). The irony though, given where you seem to be coming from, is fun. Read more

Pundits and media in general are not providing Trump the velvet ride it granted Mr. Obama in 2008. Maybe it's because Trump is a known factor - not the inexperienced mystery man Obama was (and in some ways, still is) - and liberal pontificators are threatened by his rhetoric. If hard power means fewer red lines and a more effective, productive response from allies than Obama has gotten, let's hear less about soft power. This isn't yielding desired results - as evidenced in tragic Syria. Read more

The voice that Trump articulated venting the exasperation of disenfranchised Americans, deserves respect.The Establishments around the world had become insensitive to the growing marginalization of the Majority.Democracy was the last chance - as Trump triumphantly tweeted - for the Marginalized Majority to realign Sovereign Economics.Candidate Trump contained generous dollops of rhetoric, most of which are likely to he jettisoned by President Trump.What must not be jettisoned is the justice that The Marginalized Majority demanded.Sovereign Economics needs to be realigned with the mandate of Democracy.

The parallels with India is worth a reference - Modi became the Voice of The Majority, marginalized by Dynasty for 70 years.The First Family in India had distorted Economic Geography - The Majority in The Heartlands were marginalised.The Minorities had assembled a coalition of Secular Democrats - unleashing rabid Caste Sectarianism.Sovereign Economics - masterminded by Pundits supposed fountainheads of wisdom - was no longer aligned with Democracy.

America it seems uncannily replicated India's insidious Caste System - pockets of prosperity lording over swathes of penury.Democracy in America has given The Majority the tools to overturn The Inequality created by manmade Economics.Whether Candidate Trump succeeds as President Trump is to be seen.But the assets that made America into The City-on-the-Hill have not evaporated.Britain passed on the baton of The Anglosphere to America - but the soft power that British legacy bequeathed, is abiding.In a world where Sectarianism - Religion Caste Race Ethnicity - is flourishing, The Anglosphere remains the lonely beacon.TRUMP deserves respect and well wishes in leading America to greatness, without which hope itself may disappear.

The people of India just elected Narendra Modi, a Trump-like figure. Somehow, I think Trump and Modi will be quite able to do business together. No doubt the failed cosmopolitan elites of India hate Modi just as much as the failed cosmopolitans in the U.S. hate Trump. The people of India and the USA (and the UK and the Netherlands) have stopped listening. Read more

Trump was elected to liberate the American people from the nightmare world of the cosmopolitan elite. The cosmopolitan elite has been both infinitely greedy and unbearably smug for decades. The people of the UK and now the USA have revolted against their oppressors. The gated-community crowd have trashed the lives of ordinary people without mercy. Now the unprotected are rejecting the unfounded arrogance of the protected. It is called Democracy. For years, the elite has been able to shutdown all debate on trade, immigration, failed multiculturalism, Open Borders, PC by just shouting "racism", "sexism", "bigotry", etc. Of course, PC has always been a tool for elite exploitation of the people. This year, the people stopped listening Read more

Curtis, I have enjoyed the good fortune of a highly successful career and current do tutoring in Calculus, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics (and Comp Sci of course). My own life has not been too bad. However, I have seen my country relentlessly decline for decades. I have seen ordinary Americans sink into every greater despair (and for good reason). I have attended the funerals of people (friends) who lost hope and died of an OD.

At the same time I have seen the exploitative PC elite grow ever richer, ever more arrogant, ever greedier. On Tuesday, the people voted out the elite. For at least one day, the American people trounced the cosmopolitans.

By the way, you reference to "white male supporters" was just the typical PC racism of our times. If you expect those folks to support any Democratic candidate in the future, you need to check your hate. Read more

I wonder if you really believe all that, or if it's just a primal scream produced by a lifetime of frustration and feelings of inadequacy? Either way, you have my sincere sympathy -- it must be exhausting to hang on to that level of anger and denial.

If you're hoping for Mr. Trump to ease your pain though, I think you're in for a lot more frustration and unhappiness. It looks to me like Trump has already started to ease his angry and already very unhappy (mostly white, mostly male) supporters under his bus. Read more

Curtis, like it or not, Hillary was the candidate of hate. Hate for white people. Hate for men. Hate for heterosexuals. Hate for the cisgendered. Hate for anyone who didn't attend an Ivy League school. Hate for anyone who thought America should have borders. Hate for anyone who thought Americans (without a PhD) should be able to get a job. Hate for anyone who believes in science.

Hillary was planning on giving her victory speech with the "Mothers of the BLM" movement on stage. BLM is the Klan of our times. Actually, worse than the Klan because the Klan was never PC. Hillary fully embraced the Klan to get elected (try at least).

On Tuesday, the American people rejected PC hate. The American people rejected the corrupt Klanidate, Hillary.

The Republican error -- and it is of tragic proportions -- is to assume that Trump can in any way liberate the American people from anything. As a young woman put it yesterday, he has ushered in an era of state sponsored hate. It won him an election, but moved all of us one step closer to a Hobbesian state of nature in the process -- and I don't think that's the kind of change any of us wants.

And most of us, right and left, want change, I think, to repair a system that has become unjust. We differ with regards to how that change can be accomplished. However it is to be accomplished though, it will require that we find common ground -- and Trump, by his style and lack of substance, has made the search for common ground exponentially more difficult, not only at home, but abroad as well. Read more

The American visa ban on Narendra Modi was an example of 'soft power'. If 'soft power' or 'smart power' existed, the Indians should have dumped Modi even as Chief Minister of a province. Instead they elected him Prime Minister.Tharoor thinks India should develop 'soft power'- for example in Africa. The Indians gave a University in Ghana a statue of Mahatma Gandhi. The students would have no truck with it because they had read on the internet that Gandhi was a racist. So much for soft power.Who still believes in it? The answer is China. They've passed a law making it obligatory for films to promote the values of their regime. Will this increase China's soft power? Nope. It will reduce it as smart people become disaffected.What 'soft power' did the US really have in the Brexit debate? None. It turned out Farage had more influence on America than Obama did.Perhaps Tharoor knows of a time when the US highlighting of 'human rights' equated with soft power. To my knowledge, every time such 'soft power' was effective, it was a diplomatic own goal. In other words, your 'soft power' is only effective if what you are actually doing is cutting your own throat. Tharoor thinks America was defeated in Vietnam and the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan because there is some deficiency in 'hard power'. No such deficiency exists. Irma Adelman pointed out that there was a purely economic way to win in Vietnam. She was ignored.Spending treasure instead of blood is still part of 'hard power'. The Soviets could have shot every last Khalqi, evacuated the Parchamis, and subsidized competing tribes perhaps bringing back the King to preside over the chaos. They didn't do it though they pumped so much money into Kabul that it was cheaper to buy your TV or Hifi there than in Dubai or Hong Kong.Tharoor thinks Gitmo reduced American 'soft power'. This is nonsense. Nobody cared. Obama himself forgot his promises in this regard and it never became an issue. What did become an issue was his reluctance- wise, it turns out- to get embroiled in Syria. By contrast, Libya- on which Hillary was gung ho- was a debacle for which Obama shifted the blame onto Cameron. However, it was the 'hard power' deficit thus displayed which laid the ground for a general recoiling from the corollary of the 'soft power' doctrine- viz. the notion that there is a 'rule bound' international community out there. Merkel is the last hold out here. But she'll be gone in a year and Europe reconstituted as a fortress- not something which wants to 'attract' yet more migrants.'Soft power' is cool if you can move with your family to whoever is seduced by its 'cheap talk' charms. 'Hard power' is a 'costly signal'. It says you have to pay your dues to be a member of this club. Nobody rides for free. That's why hard power talks and bullshit walks.There is another reason 'soft power' has had its day. Economists call it the 'McKelvey Chaos theorem'. Essentially, if policy space is multi-dimensional and multi-lateral then we know that 'agenda control' is decisive. Nye was saying 'hey! the U.S can get agenda control by making policy space multidimensional- e.g. linking a trade deal to human rights, enviormental sustainability, governance, judicial independence etc. Then, so long as we control the agenda, we can ensure we always get whatever outcome we want'. What was the result? The very articulation of the 'soft power' doctrine led to the creation of a superior defense to it. Obama tries to scold Duterte. Guess who now looks a fool?Tharoor writes as though even diplomats from his country were not subject to Jim Crow laws in America till the Fifties and early Sixties. Nobel Laureate Chandrashekar was barred from teaching in a College because he was a black man and some of students were female and white. All this was common knowledge in India when Tharoor was at School. Why is he pretending that America has always been viewed as soft and inviting? True, things have changed. Still, today, even Trump goes out of his way to be nice to Indian-Americans- even appropriating Modi's Hindi slogan- it is because Hindu Americans are doing well financially and have not posed any sort of threat. The truth is nobody wants migrants who are poor, unskilled or who pose any sort of law and order threat. It is sheer hypocrisy to pretend otherwise.What story did America really tell in this election? Is it not that the wife of a President doesn't get to be President just because her hubby was? Isn't that the same story that the last Indian election told?Trump said he would be an awesome President. Hillary said she was the best qualified to be President. But the Presidency isn't a reward for having collected all the right badges. It is a job.Modi, whom Tharoor's party disapproves off, got the job as P.M because he said he'd fix things and anyone could call him on his mobile if his people didn't fix things fast enough. It wasn't a sophisticated message but it was what people wanted to hear. The Government ought to do stuff for the people who pay its wages. If Modi loses the next election, it will be because he didn't deliver. The fact that Indian 'soft power' has increased to the point where Trump speaks a couple of words in Hindi or that British Prime Ministers prance around in Bollywood costumes when they visit the Taj Mahal carries no weight whatsoever.Read more

I suggest that Curtis Carpenter read the 4th paragraph of this article. Many academics, like Nussbaum, supported the Visa ban on Modi not on any narrow legalistic grounds but on the basis that America had the ability to influence Indian domestic policy by reason of the attraction Indians felt towards America's culture and political values. Tharoor is saying that the existence of Gitmo destroyed that 'soft power'. Thus, in his view, the head of the RSS said 'because America tortures Jihadis, I won't order Modi to return to his duties as a simple pravachak.' Such a view is risible.Nye's 'soft power' might have a descriptive value, but it can't be instrumentalised effectively. As far as Indo-US relations are concerned, the one field where Tharoor's official position gives him autocritas, I'm saying it never existed. Why? Nye may have developed the concept of soft power in 1990 but Gramsci had developed a concept of hegemony much earlier which explained why such soft power was invidious. The methods to combat it have been very widely known on Indian campuses of the sort where Tharoor received his initial education. Gramsci was not alone. Subaltern resistance has a rich vernacular tradition wherever a 'soft power' threat exists.India believed Gandhi was an attractive figure and that the gift of the statue of an attractive Indian figure would increase Indian 'soft power', as against what China was putting on the table, in West Africa. The move backfired. Why? It was transparent. Human beings have evolved to be suspicious of what superficially attracts them or the attempt to so attract them.Game theory suggests that 'cheap talk' can at best foster a 'pooling equilibrium'. Costly signals are required for a separating one. But power has not been wielded- in fact nothing has happened-if the playing field has been leveled merely, i.e. a pooling equilibrium rather than a separating gradient has been established.Is there any way to save 'soft power' from fatuity- to turn it into 'smart power'- for example by a superior manipulation of networks? Nope. That was tried in the fight against ISIS. ISIS won. Now it is being bombed out of its tunnels, that fight has become more equal.'Attraction' gives rise to 'Tiebout sorting' which in turn gives rise to the possibility that those who control an attractive 'Tiebout model' can extract a rent which rises to restore an equilibrium. But this means that rent-seeking or agenda control will dissipate 'soft power' under conditions of free competition for political office.In any case, any attempt to instrumentalize soft power can be very cheaply countered by pointing out that it is an invidious attempt at seduction. Thus 'soft power' exists only if those it seeks to manipulate are soft in the head.Read more

Having known this profile since childhood, I predicted a Trump win midway through the primaries. When Harvard and MIT "educated" older people can watch Fox News without shame or barfing, you know the country is full of people who can talk the democratic talk, but never walk it.Racial problems are not new, in fact, they are the hallmark of ALL of US history. White Americans cannot get by without someone to step on, since otherwise, the vast majority would look in the mirror and die from shame at the clueless hick staring back. Oh, they can grub money, alright, but so can any warlord or criminal.Soft power? Al that is left is soft heads! Lucky for me, I got away from that abusive hell hole decades ago, and never looked back. Read more

I would certainly agree that Donald Trump is a soft power disaster of Trump Tower proportions for my country, but I'm not ready to take the trophy for all-time greatest soft power disaster away from George W. Bush yet. After all, Trump's body count (as far as we know) is still 0.

The Republicans have been doing a good job of nailing the coffin of American prestige shut since Richard Nixon. We'll have to see if Trump can finish the job. Read more

PS On Air: The Super Germ Threat

NOV 2, 2016

In the latest edition of PS On
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, Jim O’Neill discusses how to beat antimicrobial resistance, which
threatens millions of lives, with Gavekal Dragonomics’ Anatole Kaletsky
and Leonardo Maisano of
Il Sole 24 Ore.

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